culture is riven with division? well, my guest today is the great american novelist, new york resident, paul auster. if america is experiencing a culture war, is he ready to fight? paul auster, welcome to hardtalk. thank you. it's a pleasure to be in your home, your writing study is just below us, the floor below. just tell me, does it matter to you when you are writing what is going on in the world outside yourfront door? does it affect your writing? well, it depends on what you mean. if there is a fire engine screeching in front of my door, it will interrupt my concentration, and i might go out and see what's going on. but if there is a distant war going on in another place and i know about it, i'm not going to read about it while i'm doing my work for the day. but i certainly will inform myself about it later. you talk of distant wars. i'm thinking of wars much closer to home. you write a lot about your take on american politics. you've talked about your feelings through the course of four years of donald trump. you have talked about a country at war with itself. so the war isn't so very far away. yes, the war that we are engaged in here, fortunately, has not become — yet — a fighting war with guns, to a large degree. but we are divided in ways that i have never seen before. and i have been around a long time now. you've been around a long time, and you grew up with �*60s activism, you were a very vocal opponent of ronald reagan conservatism. you were a very vocal opponent of george bush's decision to go to iraq. true enough. so are you telling me there is profoundly different about this division in america, this polarisation? because you could argue that we have been here before many times. well, i think it has been a series of steps that have been taken, and each time when i think it's gotten as bad as it can possibly be, it gets worse. because once obama was elected, and this, i think, is something people don't talk about very much. there was a backlash by a sizeable percentage of the american public against the election of obama, a black man occupying the white house. just this symbolic resonance of that, i think, brought out all the hidden racism in the culture that people had forgotten about to the degree that it really continues to exist, and immediately, overnight, remember, the tea party grew up, and by 2010, two years later, the democrats were overwhelmed in the midterm elections, even though obama was re—elected in 2012, the democrats never got a majority in congress again, and no serious legislation was passed for the last six years he was in office. you haven't even gotten to donald trump yet. not yet. and i'm thinking to myself. i'm clearing my throat, i'm getting ready for that. but you know what i'm thinking, i am thinking here speaks a man who, americans of a different political persuasion will already be dismissing as a typical new york liberal elites, intellectual. and jewish on top of it all. yeah. so, i'm just wondering whether, actually, you don't see any room for communication with your political opponent? you are a leftist, that is clear, but you are not really leaving much room for communication. i want to talk to people on the other side. they don't want to talk to me. i am perfectly happy to talk to anybody. but with respect, you dismiss the trump movement as jihadist. you talked about the use of the confederate flag as though it's a swastika. your clear implication is that what trump represents is something akin to american nazism. i wouldn't go so far as to say nazi—ism, no, no, but i would say that it's an anti—democratic impulse, and it is an authoritarian impulse. i mean to say, look at the facts, it's just simply that. i mean, i think all of these labels are unimportant. we have a government that is supposed to function, is supposed to be a democracy, it's supposed to be a government of "we the people". trump... but it is, though, it is. joe biden replaced donald trump, admittedly, it didn't come easy, but it happened. i know that, i know that, and this is, you know, why the system is still standing. but, um, when trump got in, his mission was, and i don't think he really cared one way or the other, he allied himself with hard right republicans who have been trying to diminish the size and scope of the government for decades, and they finally had a willing partner in the white house this time. this brings me back to my opening question, about how you create and work when you are so passionate and so preoccupied with what is happening outside your own front door, because the truth is, during the years you've just described — the trump years — you committed to a major new artistic enterprise, a biography of a writer born in the late 19th century, that many people outside the us will never have heard of — stephen crane. true enough. and did you do that because you felt there were resonances in his short life with the united states that you are living in in yourtime? not at all, not at all. this book was not generated by politics. this book was generated by the fact that after i finished writing my last very long novel, 4,3,2,1, i was a very tired person, and i needed a break, and i spent some months not writing at all, anything for the first time probably in my adult life, and i was reading a lot, and i was reading books that i had somehow missed and had always wanted to read. i finally read middlemarch, for god's sake, my wife's favourite novel. i finally read to the lighthouse by virginia woolf, which i find one of the most beautiful novels i've ever read in my life, a masterpiece. and one of the writers i went back to was stephen crane, whom i had not read since i was a teenager. and for those folks who don't know him, stephen crane died very young in his late 20s�*... 28. ..of tuberculosis, but had already written some extraordinary books that perhaps the most famous of which was at take on fighting in the civil war, the red badge of courage, which he wrote, never having been a soldier, and certainly born long after the civil war was over. yes. but nonetheless a book which matters to many americans. yes. and clearly matters to you. yes, well, i think it's an extraordinary book. in any case, i started reading crane again, and i was astonished by how fantastically powerful and original it was. and then i got interested in his life, which was a fascinating life, full of all kinds of adventures, and i decided after a while that it would be a good idea to write a little book about stephen crane, an appreciation to explain why i cared about his work and why i thought people should read it and to pay more attention to than is being given to it now, and the little book grew into a big book. 800 pages of book. well, not quite 800 pages, but it's a big book, what the hell has gotten hold of me? and the only thing i could think of was that in four, three, two, 0ne, there is a character, ferguson, and there are four of them. archie ferguson. archie ferguson, there are four versions of... you gave him four lives. crane is ferguson five. that's how i kept thinking about it. in a way, trying to understand him was as daunting as trying to understand one of my fictional characters, and i had to go through the same processes as a writer, emotional process, it's not even an intellectual process, it's an emotional process, trying to get myself inside him to understand his very erratic at times behaviour. it's interesting to me that you link that book to four, three, two, 0ne, because as you say, in that book, you imagine this guy, born in newark in the same year you were born, and then you follow through different possibilities for his life, depending on so many contingencies and coincidences and things that happen that might not have happened. right. and it seems to me reading all of your work, one of your messages to all of us human beings is take nothing for granted, assume nothing, make plans but don't imagine they are ever going to work out because happenstance and the what ifs of life always take over. well, i agree with you completely. and thank you for summing up my work so succinctly, i'm impressed. another way to put it is, and i believe this firmly, anything can happen, and that anything can happen at any moment. but you know what that tempts me to ask you is? what? in your own life, imagine you are sort of living a life where you could look back at moments, the sliding doors moments when things might have been different, are there now things the way she would have done or decisions you'd have taken in a different way which would have taken you down different pathways, different avenues? is there a human being of our age who doesn't feel some regret about some things that we've done in the past? i can't imagine a human being who wouldn't have some second thoughts about a decision he or she made years before. what are your regrets? well, i don't even want to talk about it. why? it's too personal. i need to say, i suppose, you know, people that i, you know, attach myself to, without really understanding the nature of that other person fully enough. and let's leave it at that. see, sometimes, iwonder whether you even regret being a writer, because you have a love—hate relationship with what you do. you say you are compelled to do it, you cannot imagine not doing it, but you also describe how weird it is to make a decision to be a writer, to rather than go out into the world and live your life and experience in an outward sort of way, you turn inward. you go down to my literally come into your basement, come into your writing study, and everything that they can you put yourself in there and shut yourself away from it all. but i have no regrets about that. really? no, i think that i was made to do this, and i need to do it. and i don't feel that it's going inward, you see? this is something i would dispute completely. the first time i had an impulse to write anything, i was nine years old. it was the first very beautiful day of spring, it was a saturday, there was no school. i remember getting up and feeling free and happy, and i left the house early in the morning and i took a walk through the neighbourhood, i went to a little park where, not far from the house, and the first birds were hopping around, the first robins of spring. i felt ecstatically alive, and i had an impulse to write a poem. age nine. age nine, and i sat down and wrote probably the most wretched poem ever written about the coming of spring, ever written by a mortal human being in the new world, and yet, this was the feeling i had, that by trying to write about what was happening, i felt more connected to the world around me. i felt that i had found a place for myself inside this teeming chaotic reality outside of myself, not inside of myself. i think that writing has always been away for me to connect rather than to separate. you have long been — i don't know if �*enemy�* is the right word — but you have long questioned the utility of creative writing, teaching writing. but i just wonder whether. .. well, wait, wait, wait — there is a big difference between the utility of writing and the practice of teaching writing — two different things. now, i've made the point that writing, or art in general, doesn't do anything tangible in the world. it doesn't fix the toilet the way a plumber can fix the toilet. it doesn't fix a broken arm the way a doctor can fix a broken arm. it is, in a sense, useless. but this uselessness, i think, is the very definition of what makes human life so exciting to live, is because we do have this ability to think and to reflect on what we are thinking and to think about the world and to make art out of that. and to value beauty. but it — exactly — but it doesn't have any concrete purpose in life in the way that all these practical occupations do. teaching writing, on the other hand, is something i don't really think one can do. i think it's very important for young writers to have guidance — and that's something different — but these are people who are already committed to trying to become writers and they want some help about, say, how — "why doesn't the story that i've written work?", "why is this poem not succeeding?", and then you as, an older writer, can say, "all right. "let's look at it and we can figure out where you went wrong and what you might be able to do." but i — sorry to interrupt, but i'm just thinking about so many young people today who have deep sort of creative urges but are not necessarily turning to fiction writing, the novel, as a platform. they're being reared in a world where actually, words are mostly used on their smartphone, are mostly used in bite—size chunks on social media platforms, and i'm just wondering whether paul auster in 2021 worries that the next generation or the generation after that of people who have real creative gifts are not going to engage with the, as you have just written, 800—page book. that's ok! i mean, there are all kinds of arts and there are all means of expression. far be it for me to, you know, make restrictions on what people should do. but i think you underestimate young people a little bit. i keep running into young people who are reading passionately and really care about it and i think we in the so—called — or the people in the media, the people who are somehow the gatekeepers of our culture — have decided that the audience is stupid and that they don't really know anything and i think this is what, you know, the — ha! — capitalist market of art — i mean, art as business — has assumed all along. but then are you saying that in this market—oriented capitalist united states of america of 2021, where the internet and digital culture dominates all, are you saying that there — that writing fiction and the novel matters as much as ever? that, you know, you in the generation before you, of updike and bellow and roth and all these others. it doesn't matter because a book is read by one person at a time. and the book, in spite of everything, is the only — a novel, for example, is the only place, i think, in the human world where two strangers can meet on terms of absolute intimacy. and that space that is created in the book is something very beautiful and precious. and whether ten people read the book or 10,000 people read the book or 10 million people read the book, it doesn't matter. the person reading it is alone with the writer and the two of you — the writer and the reader — are creating the book together. and every reader reads a different book, and this is what is so beautiful about it. we all bring our own lives, our own sufferings, our ownjoys, our past to whatever it is we encounter in the world, and nothing — never more so than when we're encountering art, and particularly literature, which requires time. i can look at the paintings on the wall at a glance and see what there, but if i pick up this 750—page book, no, i can't take it all in at once, i have to give it time, and that time is the beautiful thing about it. let me ask you a somewhat different question, but it taps into your passion for good art, you know — whether it be great writing or great pictures or great movies. you have a thing for beauty and you appreciate it. does it matter to you if you learn that the people who created that beauty were notjust deeply flawed but possibly criminal? that they did things which any right—thinking human being would regard as unacceptable. because there a real discussion right across culture right now... i agree — i agree — and i have thought about this all my life and the fact is, human beings are flawed and artists are flawed, too. and if we expect human perfection from every artist that we want to read or look at or listen to... yeah, but you are creating a false argument. it's not about expecting perfection, it's about... well... ..it�*s about placing somebody and their art in a context. and if that creator or artistic genius, maybe, was so flawed that their behaviours were utterly unacceptable, then does that colour the way you see their creativity? let me give you an example. it's funny you bringing this up because just last night, my daughter and her husband were here and i started telling them about the novels of louis—ferdinand celine, the french writer best known for the two novels that he wrote in the 1930s — journey to the end of the night and death on the instalment plan — which i think are two of the greatest novels of the 20th century — extraordinary, energetic, brilliant novels. celine was a horrible anti—semite fascist and he wrote anti—semitic tracts leading up to world war ii. and that doesn't matter in appreciating his art? those books? no, it doesn't really, because these books are great. and that would apply to some of the modern—day discussions about everybody from philip roth to woody allen to roman polanski — whom you've argued for? listen, it's — it's — it's — um — how shall i put it? if it's in the work, then — then — then there is a discussion to be had. if it's not in the work — i mean... i listen — we listen to the music of gesualdo, the mediaeval composer. he murdered his wife but he is truly the best mediaeval composer. i mean, it's undeniable that his music is beautiful. well, and he murdered his wife. i mean, so the fact that he did that means we can't listen to the music? i — it's a murky subject. it is! i don't have a final answerfor you on this, i'm just saying for me, it's complicated because i have to be able to say that artist did a beautiful work and i have to also say i don't like that artist personally and i find abhorrent many of his or her ideas. but what — how can i reconcile them? you can't. i mean, life is complicated! if we can all make simple solutions for all of life's complications, then would life really be worth living? i mean, it's messy! it's complicated! you are taking me into end thoughts and philosophy here with life and its worth and i want to end with you and a personal thought. you talk about entering the winter of your own life. i meant chronologically! i know you did, i know you did, but i'm extrapolating from that, because there are writers — i'm thinking now of martin amis, for example, who said, "frankly, any writer writes their best work when they are still" — quote unquote" �*young' — that "old people do not create their best work". i know martin. martin comes out with all kinds of remarks and there again, we can start laughing about all of this too. i don't agree with that. you have said yourself — you said, "you know what? "i have written pretty much the things i wanted to write. "i will only write more if i find it to be" — and it's an interesting phrase you used — "really necessary". is it really necessary any more? or are you kind of done? no, i've started writing some new things and as long as i feel excited about what i'm doing, then i'm going to keep doing it. i'd prefer to do it. it's just simply i don't ever feel the need to write just to write. that's not how i have ever functioned. yeah. and i'm — listen, when i first started out, i thought, "maybe i'll be good enough to finish one book that will be good enough to be published and that might be the whole thing" and then i was amazed to find myself some time later having a new idea for another book that excited me just as much as the first and i thought, "well, maybe that's the end," and i've been living that way ever since thinking, "maybe this is the end" and there's — something new always seems to happen. paul auster, there are a lot of people around the world who would be delighted to hear of that. thank you very much indeed for being on hardtalk. thank you for inviting me. hello there. we await the arrival of the second named storm of the season. storm barra will bring the worst of the weather during tuesday as windy weather develops widely. added to that later on snow and blizzards over some of the hills in the north. this is the center of the storm approaching western parts of ireland. it will push a band of heavy rain northwards and eastward across the uk. but ahead of that we start the day with a frost widely and some icy patches in western scotland and the northwest of england. a very cold start then. we got that rain sweeping its way across northern ireland, wales and the southwest in the morning, the winds picking up as well. that will be followed by some sunny intervals and heavy, blustery showers in the afternoon as that band of weather weather continues to push its way northwards and eastwards. may make double figures again in the southwest but it's much colder elsewhere, especially northern england and scotland where into that cold air the rain will fall as snow. particularly in the hills, a couple of centimetres, peak district, pennines, cumbria and the fells. heavier snowfall, blizzards likely in the southern uplands and that snowy weather will work its way up into the highlands later on in the day as the main rain band sweeps away from eastern parts of england, heavy showers follow and it stays very windy. strongest winds are likely to be through the irish sea, english channel, gust 70, 80mph near coast. generally a0 or 50 or so but could get windier around some north seacoast in the evening. now, after steaming into the uk storm barra isjust going to stall overnight and into wednesday. and it will weaken as well. wednesday is still a windy day, just not as windy. the strongest winds are going to be in south wales and the southwest of england. and around that area of low pressure showers or longer spells of rain rotating with some brief glimpses of sunshine. but it's still cold, temperatures around five to 7 by the time we get to thursday our storm really is no more. it's continuing to weaken, the winds are continuing to drop. this band of rain from the atlantic will arrive into northern ireland later in the day. but otherwise, it's a much quieter day on thursday. a fair bit of cloud around, many places are going to be dry, some sunshine at time but we are still in cold air, temperatures typically at sixes and sevens. welcome to newsday, reporting live from singapore. i'm christmas money. the headlines. the united states announces a diplomatic boycott of the 2022 winter olympics because of china's record on women's rights. china calls the boycott a pretentious act and insists it's against the spirit of the games. condemnation from across the world as the former elected leader of myanmar, aung san suu kyi, is given a prison sentence. and we talk to the hollywood legend mel brooks who, at 95, is looking back on his eventful life. live from our studio in singapore, this is bbc news — it's newsday.